Word plugin and Groups: make it still more difficult to cite from the wrong libraries
Despite the nice display which shows where items originate, it still can easily happen that in a collaborative document two out of six citations of a source go to a personal instead of a group library (we have this all the time). This indicates that a more rigorous option may be needed to "lock" libraries to documents, and to discourage citing from the wrong libraries.
Proposal 1: Make it possible to "pin" one or more libraries. In the dropdown which shows the originating libraries of items, provide a simple "pin" button. If clicked, this means that items from that library will always get precedence (i.e. are displayed below items cited if any, above items from other libraries).
Proposal 2: If there are pinned libraries, provide a warning when citing from a non-pinned library. Actually it would be even better if it gave the option to copy the item to the pinned library:
Warning: this item does not exist in your pinned library.
Do you want to copy it there?
[button: Copy to pinned library and cite]
[button: Cite version from non-pinned library]
Proposal 1: Make it possible to "pin" one or more libraries. In the dropdown which shows the originating libraries of items, provide a simple "pin" button. If clicked, this means that items from that library will always get precedence (i.e. are displayed below items cited if any, above items from other libraries).
Proposal 2: If there are pinned libraries, provide a warning when citing from a non-pinned library. Actually it would be even better if it gave the option to copy the item to the pinned library:
Warning: this item does not exist in your pinned library.
Do you want to copy it there?
[button: Copy to pinned library and cite]
[button: Cite version from non-pinned library]
Here are a couple of related threads
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23292/replacing-citations-with-a-copy-from-different-library/
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/19350/option-to-disable-libraries/
I have written two different patches with different approaches to solve this problem. The first was to disable libraries (like pinning), and the second was to use a preferred library that will always be used if a copy of an item exist in that library. However, neither of these patches is currently included in the Zotero code.
There are some discussions in the Zotero developers mailing list
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topicsearchin/zotero-dev/"preferred$2420library"/zotero-dev/UtQBZMtylWA
And there is a ticket for this
https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/1897
But it is unclear if this will be implemented, or when that could be available.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/zotero-dev/7ITP6mDuSBw
What would still remains as a problem is merging two documents that have been written using different libraries. I am suggesting a solution for this problem here
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23292/replacing-citations-with-a-copy-from-different-library/
These two changes would probably solve most use cases where duplicates of the same reference from different libraries are included in a document.
I fully support Mronkko's proposal for an easier way to replace citations (and especially bulk replacing citations).